


Much Less Than Empty

by hakaibunshi



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Dark, M/M, Panic Attacks, Psychological Trauma, Tendershipping, nothing too explicit but some description of sexual intimacy, unrequited!heartshipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28040637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakaibunshi/pseuds/hakaibunshi
Summary: You can separate the boy from the artifact, but you can not separate the host from the parasite—post Battle City.//canon-divergence//Ryou finally gets rid of the millennium ring. But that act of separation does not offer the expected healing thereafter.Instead, he is thrown into a new torment, fully conscious now, feeling all the anguish of losing your ghost.
Relationships: Bakura Ryou/Yami Bakura
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. PROLOG

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PROLOG

* * *

Even after all these years, the darkness was still a vivid mnemonic. How it was filled with noise: constant, violent banging around him—just a fragile boy, trapped inside a small metal box and from the outside a herd of ogres was trashing down on it with heavy clubs. His hands and feet pulled so tightly toward his own body that he might as well have turned into a ball. So terrifying it became his very definition of fear.

The fear of his box bursting under the assault. 

And also the fear of the box never bursting. 

The fear of what would have happened when the banging stopped. Because nothing good ever happened while he was in that darkness. Usually, someone was gone by the end of it and how many people had he lost this way already?

At first, he had been too young and too naive still to see the correlation. That came a little later. And with that, the beating had stopped as well. The box had disappeared and eventually, he had just floated in an endless room of black and nothing else, his arms and legs stretched out to all sides. He had understood that there had never been a box, to begin with. No ogres and no clubs.

All he had to do was wait until the other one allowed him to come forth.

As he grew older like that, he had been drowning in the guilty consciousness of knowing that he had never actively attempted to combat him. Him, who was incontestable. It was better to be quiet and hope for it to eventually stop. Surely, one day, there would be no one left for him to take away.

And so the boy had spent the past years waiting for that moment that never came.

Instead, he had found someone who—against all expectations—was strong enough to stand victorious against this spirit assailant. And thanks to that someone Ryou would go home tonight and be all himself for the first time in a long, long while. Where he would understand that he didn't even know what that meant.


	2. PHANTOM PAIN

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PHANTOM PAIN

* * *

It was meant with nothing more or less than benevolence and care for his friend, when Yugi reached out and took the Millennium Ring from Malik, carefully watching Ryou as if to confirm his approval. Their eyes met with understanding. The gesture was taken for the offer it was meant to be.

The air around them was trenched in precognition. Ryou felt there and then that something wasn’t right. But he chose not to listen and just observed the cursed item changing hands yet again for what was supposed to be a final time before returning to its origin. From it, the chain dangled like the rope it had been around his neck, as it had taken his breath away while each day of the spent decade had passed by him slipping in and out of consciousness.

It was liberation—the humming in his muscles, accompanied by the sensation of them slowly withering. Heat rising in his chest. All that couldn’t be anything _but_ the pleasure of regaining control over himself. The burning in his throat had him snap for air, pulling it in so intensely it hurt.

Malik turned away. For him, it was now time to reconcile with his loved ones and come to terms with his own past hauntings. In any other circumstances, Ryou would have felt the greatest empathy for the young boy who had been through so much Ryou could, on one level or another, relate to. But right now there was no space for such compassion. He barely allowed Malik to say his goodbye before he claimed Yugi and his attention, towing him into an almost passionate embrace. For a short two or three seconds, he squeezed himself against the friend, feeling, for the last time, the small, sharp daggers of the ring, that lay trapped now between the two boys in Yugi's hand.

It was no use to condemn the _other one_ when in reality it was his own fault for letting it all happen. Even if no one would ever point their finger at him, it was hard to imagine that, if even just for a second, none of his friends had ever thought that he could have tried harder. In the end, Yugi, who was in a similar situation, had managed to keep control over his own body and over his spirit companion. But for Ryou it had taken little more than an initiating trauma—something so far pushed into the back of his mind that he didn’t even remember anymore—and he had been ready and willing to close his eyes before all of it. Escape all responsibility. Instead of confronting himself, he had quietly waited in the darkness whenever the other one was in control. “I am so sorry for everything, Yugi…”

“I know.” Yugi’s free hand lay atop of Ryou’s back and brushed across the thin shirt, dirty and wrinkled from all that had happened to them within the past hours. An attempt to comfort his friend who felt so responsible beyond reason. “I promise… you can leave all this behind you now. You don’t have to worry about him anymore.” Yugi pulled himself out of the tight grasp and slit the ring inside his bag, keeping his eyes on Ryou. “I won’t let him harm you again.”

There was a calmness in Yugi’s voice that spoke of exhaustion. They had endured so much throughout these two days—some things they had yet to fully understand. Yet, one thing was certain for Ryou: Once more, he had played his part in a wicked game and had made everything just a little bit more difficult, more disturbing than it had to be. Because once more, he had surrendered control over his body.

But the ring was gone now. If there was any person he could put his faith in, it was Yugi.

Far too long had the tyranny of the ring lasted—and with it _his_ dominance over him, and how it had him suffer and worse even: how he had others suffer through his silent complicity. He stepped away.

Each of them, including their friends, were silently engaged with their own worries, their own thoughts about what had transpired throughout the Battle City tournament. But they were ready to call it a day and come to pick back up those thoughts after the rest they so deserved.

  
  


When Ryou arrived in his apartment that evening, he was alone.

The reality of it felt so strange. So he reminded himself that he had been alone for a long time already. He had chosen to live by himself to not eventually lose his father as well. He had stayed clear of making friends until Yugi had come into his life. And even after that, he had always been so wary, so careful not to get too close. Somehow that wariness didn't go away overnight—he wasn't sure what he had expected. Instead of resuming his life from where he had left it all those years ago, he was fazed by the sudden freedom and didn't quite know what to do with it.

The days and nights were longer than ever. Some days, after school, he would take a detour around the neighborhood. Watching other kids, as if he was studying what he was supposed to do. Of course, Yugi came over often. He had been the first to notice when Ryou stopped sleeping.

One night, as he lay on his back on the floor in his room, staring up toward nothing in particular while his panting slowly grew frantic, his loneliness became so final and so merciless—it taught him against his beliefs that he had never truly been alone before.

The panic attack hit him fully off the cuff. He didn’t know this feeling. He knew angst and the threat of waking up not knowing what cruelty had been committed with his hands. But when he tried to turn over his whimpering body that was now just the mass of a slain manatee, a terror washed over him that he had never faced before and his entirety started to shake and shiver. His flat, hysterical laughing—he could hear it as if he was standing beside himself—was nothing but a mix of gasping and coughing and spitting. His chest was pulled tight, the shaking wouldn't stop. His stomach cramped, nausea hit him and rendered him incapable of heaving up his own weight. In an attempt to find support in the table leg, he pushed himself across the floor, afraid it might smother him if he was to throw up. He only spat out some saliva. After all, there was nothing left inside him to vomit out, was there?

He cried. He was glad that he was alone and no one would hear him. But when he realized that, his crying grew louder and more violent. It was so heartbreaking, it set afire a heap of self-pity within him of which the smoke threatened suffocation. Or it was the snot blocking his nose. Either way, his head would burst under the pressure. His eyes hurt so badly and his chest. Everything. He reached for the ring around his neck but it was gone and his gasping became louder again until it was the sound of an animal. It would not be at all surprising if this was the experience of death itself.

He didn’t die.

After a couple more minutes, perhaps five or ten that felt like an hour, when he had run out of all the breath and tears, it began to subside. Weak from this violent assault he collapsed again and curled up on his side. His chest still moved along with his whimpers while he was waiting for the darkness; for the endless, dark room to enclose and protect him. For his safety box.

His cheeks were wet and his throat hurt. He regretted it all; he shouldn’t have given him away. His own whisper bewildered him, pleading and begging for forgiveness. It was truly pathetic. But that was just who he was. And he didn’t want to be alone any longer now. He had thought it would be better this way, but it was just terrifying. _I am sorry_ , he heard himself confess over and over and over again. He could come back to him now, he hadn’t meant for this to happen.

But there was no one left who could have heard him. In a grand abortion, he had gotten rid of his demon. But what was supposed to be relief was the anguish of losing something precious. Filled with that grief he pressed his hands to his chest, toward his heart, wanting so desperately what was now omitted there.

His body bent by that heartbreak and that guilt and a longing that he could not understand, Ryou waited for the storm to settle. He knew that it would not be the last one.


	3. WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS

Even after that first attack had washed over him with such destructive force, Ryou tried to hold on and himself together. Perhaps it was only the shock. Just the pain of breaking up. Maybe— _surely..._ —it would get better, eventually. But they kept coming. Getting longer. Stronger. More sudden. Until it became impossible to even think straight. Time still slipped away from him as it always had, just now he was watching it do so. He could see it falling off the walls around him, as he watched the clock fingers move. Or the shadows shifting from one side of a room to the other. He would stand before the mirror and ask himself: _are you here?_ On bad days he’d ask: _Are you real_? But he never answered. On the weekends Yugi came to bring him food. Unless he was busy helping his grandpa in which case Jounouchi came and cooked. His cooking was much simpler than Yugi’s mum’s, though Ryou only assumed this by the number of different ingredients inside each dish. It all tasted the same to him. Every meal, every day. Even on days when no one came over and he did not eat, he still tasted it. His body remembered and simulated what Ryou didn’t actively provide. Three weeks went away, or maybe two. Surprisingly, the effects of his madness were somewhat harder to identify when he was around other people. In school, he didn’t listen, but he appeared as if he did. He talked sometimes but rarely remembered what he heard himself say once he had finished.

He didn’t sleep much anymore, because it was scary. Just like everything else. Before, the other one had been the only _truly_ frightening thing. But since _he_ was gone, it was the laughter of people out on the street. Or a bird scurrying past the window. Or the noise of water reaching the boiling point. The whole world was frightening now.

What if the damned ring had taken away not just his evil ghost, but Ryou’s mind along with it? Like a feral thing, he prowled up and down his apartment, trying to come up with what he could say to Yugi for him to return the item. He had rehearsed his lines, every word. 

But no matter how much he rehearsed, he never talked to Yugi about this. Proud of his self-control, he proclaimed each passing day a victory over wrong choices. He was glad that he still had a sense of right and wrong at least if nothing else. The essence of living was now just to make it into the night without tipping anyone off as to what was going on. To make it easier on everyone, he tried his best to stay away from the others. Of course, it didn't work like that. His friends grew wary. _You don’t look so good_ , they would say. _Maybe you should see a doctor…._ He tried to smile at his face in the mirror. What considered friends he had. He put on his school uniform and admitted that they were absolutely right. It was pretty bad.

His face was sunken in and the shadows below his eyes were a little thicker every day. His hair was dull and uncombed. His fingernails had a strange color, too, almost purple, and the bones and knuckles of his hands slowly became more visible with his skin getting thinner. Even the girls had stopped taking an interest in him. Not that he had ever cared. And underneath all that surface mess, invisible to the cautious eyes of his friends even, he was also covered in bruises. He did not harm himself! But he kept running into various pieces of furniture. Here: the corner of his bed, there: his open desk-drawer. Once, in bright daylight, he had walked straight into a closed door.

Signs of his mind being elsewhere.

He took a deep breath, still standing before the mirror. His head moved left, then right, very slowly, like a warning, while he maintained eye contact with himself. It was time to stop this nonsense. The caricature stared back at him. _No!_ , he thought, lips pressed flat. He grabbed his bag from the floor. He closed his eyes. And he pushed all that toxic air out and tricked himself into believing that something had cleared up inside of him. That he _could_ master this. After all, there was no way out but to accept the loss.

Like any other day, he went to school. But unlike any other day, when he closed the door behind him that morning, the sound it made was tight and a little more hollow than usual. He acknowledged the difference and decided that things would get better now. The echo he felt where his heart should be was nothing more than the pain of desertion. A little hurt was to be expected! For years they had shared an intimate space. But he _would_ get used to the hole that was left by the other one. A hole, Ryou made very clear to himself, _not_ because that other one belonged there. _No_ ! Just a hole. Something he had carved into Ryou like a parasite into a tree. It just needed time to heal. And one day, only a scar would remain to remind him that there had ever been someone there. _Something!_ —he corrected his thoughts.

For the first time in what felt like forever, he spent the whole day listening to and laughing about the stories of his friends just like he was supposed to. After school, Jounouchi walked him home. It wasn’t the first time, they all had been rather overprotective these couple of days. This, too, was to be expected. Because that was just the kind of people they were. So sensible. He had to laugh at himself a little for believing he could have tricked them with his bad acting. But today it wasn't acting. Today _had_ been okay. Ryou was tired but satisfied when Jounouchi finally said goodbye.

Only when he shut the door close did he sense a shadow pulling on him. His muscles were tight, like his fists. He drew the air in through his nose, sharply, and pushed it out through his mouth, listening to the flutter in his chest. Through the heaviness, he shuffled into the bathroom and filled the tub with water. Anzu had given him some bath salt. To relax and hopefully help him sleep. She had mixed it herself. He only got out again when he feared his skin would dissolve and not a moment sooner. He had been thinking about drowning—a sad thought induced by lavender or rosehip or oak. He couldn't tell.

As soon as he collapsed onto the freshly made bed—this smelled like cotton. He knew that because the detergent package said so even though he still wouldn't know how to describe the scent of cotton beside that it smelled like fresh sheets. Or detergent.—he was struck down by a strange but pleasant briskness. His muscles and bones hurt from exhaustion. As if he had lived for an entire day. A long believed to be lost sense of salvation pushed him deep into the sheets. _Now_ was the time to let go.

Ryou was already way too weak to open his eyes again. So he lay atop the nicely folded sheets and stretched out his arms. His nightwear—just underpants and an old band shirt full of holes—left his limbs exposed to the cool surface. A nice tingling on his skin. Because he didn’t want to get up again he just left the dimmed headlight burning. Yes, there was really nothing good to think about the other one. Would the color of the skin under his eyes be better in the morning if he just got one night of good sleep, he wondered. He felt a gentle piercing just below the waterline of his right eye. Not enough force left in him to roll onto his side. Already dead. Or close enough. So he left himself just like he was. His chest moved up and down slowly.

Earlier, in the bathroom, he had spent some time to properly look at his body. Had made an exercise of remembering all the terrible things that had happened to him and his friends. How dangerous it had been. If Yugi wasn’t so extraordinary, all of them would have ended up victims. They might not even be alive anymore now. Ryou was so proud of Yugi's invincibility. He had stood before the big mirror, undressed, and his thin fingers had touched the scars below his chest. The palm attached to those fingers, too, showed signs of destruction. He still remembered the image of his own hand impaled by one of his carefully crafted miniature towers. Now there was a big, fleshy scar there. The wound from when the other had cut his shoulder during the Battle City event even still hurt sometimes. It would leave a scar, too.

Eventually, he managed to curl over. 

Beside him was the elongated plush rabbit he had owned for as long as he could remember. Really, it was just a long square-shaped cushion with two long tubes for ears and two longer tubes for legs. Two buttons for eyes. Funny, how everything seemed to come in pairs... He pulled it as close as he could. His wet cheeks forced themselves into the fur so strongly it would smother his bawling before he could hear it.

It took a little while before—for the first time because they had never really existed next to each other at the same moment—he was able to feel his _touch_ . Soft hands caressing his shivering shoulders. The sensation was as clear as his teeth biting down on his lip. No. He didn’t want to be alone anymore. It felt so infinitely better how the other one was lying close to him now, how his arms pulled him into his chest. Oh, and how strong they were, despite being the same arms as his own! Ryou’s crying ebbed into a nervous chuckle. That was how good it felt to have him back. He had come back for _him_ ! Ryou shivered, because it was very cold, very suddenly. Naturally, the other one had a cold presence. He knew that, _despite_ having never existed together at the same moment. Icy legs against his own. Pale hands—one of which stroke across his arm all the way up, sliding beneath the short sleeve of his T-shirt, the other clawed itself into his damp hair. Cold lips behind his ear. They wandered across his neck. He could not feel the other’s breath. But surely, that, too, was normal. It felt so good. _He_ felt so good.

Ryou flinched in surprise when one of the hands slipped into his boxers. His face stood in flames. It burnt so hot it might have sat the plush rabbit on fire, the way it was pressed into the fabric. But nothing caught fire beside his skin. Everything else stayed dead cold just like the night hovering above. Without a warning, the ghostly fingers gripped him tightly. The right hand pulled Ryou’s head back by his hair. Away from the pillow. Shame and longing on his face, wide-open now for the shadows to see. Lips on his bared neck, just below his chin where something sat so heavy in his throat.

Ryou swallowed the air, breathing intensely, deeply, audible. Now that his mouth and nose were torn away from the cushion, there was nothing to hide the arousal. He had stopped crying. It wasn’t enough. Every touch was just half a touch, obscured by something that could not be defined but worked like a thick fog. _Not. Enough_ . Ryou’s body ached to turn around but he was so anxious because a voice inside of him said that none of this made sense and that no one would be there. That what he was experiencing wasn’t right altogether. He didn’t want to know such things. What did it matter! His entire life hadn’t been right. Perhaps, he _had_ to be wrong.

The other one bit into his neck. Tender. It didn’t hurt, but it sent a shiver down his spine and he got hard right away. He moaned; a muffled sound, but a sound nonetheless. And maybe there was a keckle from behind him. That would have been very much like the other: to find amusement in the ruins of Ryou’s innocence. The bleak hand held him thoroughly, stroking up and down his length. Very slowly at first, as if to tease him only. The fingers investigated all his minuscule details, every unevenness below the soft skin, where blood pumped into his yearning. Had he missed this monster so much? He couldn’t believe himself. A quiver went through his body and he bit down on his lip until the skin broke and he tasted blood. He came too fast. Against all efforts, his body was, as it had been all his life, still yielding before the other.

The room felt vast like a universe in itself. Empty of everything besides his hitched, shallow breaths and a darkness too intense for the dimmed headlight to fight it. Burning cheeks, eyes dried out. He could still feel him. He could still feel him. He could still feel him. Even when the ticking of the wall clock slipped back into the foreground as Ryou’s breathing settled. He had lost all sense of time so he lay there trying to stay awake until the morning. After all, he would not be able to feel him anymore, once he drifted into sleep. He wouldn’t risk it! He would wait for the night to leave, whether it would take minutes or weeks. 

His arm was limp and sluggishly fell away from his body. He still managed, after a few helpless tries, to reach over his head for the tissue box standing on the dresser behind. He pulled it onto the bed—his eyes were closed, not just because the lids were too heavy to force them open, but so he could fully focus on the points of contact between him and the other. Oh, how he craved to embrace him! But should he turn around to find no one …

It would break him.

No matter how real it felt, he could not shake the fear—the dread!—that came with the knowledge that the other one didn’t _have_ a body. So he decided to just settle for what he had: He _had_ come back to him. The rest would become clear in due time.

He did, in an effort for confirmation, push backward just the slightest bit, to query if the touch against his body would intensify. On the contrary, the presence faded. Bewildered, Ryou withdrew himself in a hurry and pressed against the pillow instead. He stripped off the boxers and hastily rubbed himself clean. Thoughtlessly, the pants and the tissues landed on the floor. Of more than that he was not capable anymore. All strength had drained from him. As he was giving in and drifting away from wakeness, he could still feel the other combing through his hair before gently wrapping him into a soft embrace. It was calming.

Ryou slept well that night.

In through the open window came a chilling breeze but he wasn’t cold. Or rather, he enjoyed that he was. The colder it got, the more substantial the grip around him felt. Or maybe it was the other way around. But what difference would that make?

**Author's Note:**

> The brutality of Tendershipping is always very close to my heart, so thank you for indulging with me~ 
> 
> ( ~~the remaining chapters will be significantly longer~~...but I have yet to complete the translation as they are originally written in German and it turned out I am surprisingly bad at translating TpT) -> edit: I decided to split the remaining chapters instead~ 8D
> 
> Anyway!  
> Find me on [Tumblr](https://hakaibunshi.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mugennaphantasm)


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